maligned generation
by Birisu
Summary: KH general drabble collection. 16: Not everyone finds their calling. Namine did.
1. ambivalence

**o1. ambivalence**

In that room they nearly kiss.

He is near, and so quiet, so broken. And suddenly she's seized by the impulse to catch him and cradle him to her. She will have his head in her lap, and smooth the silver strands from his face. She has the power to break his spine, crush his heart. And, following that, Sora's, too.

Why? She fears Riku. He thrills her in a way she doesn't care for. She's never _liked _him.

_Sora, I don't understand myself sometimes, _she mumbles.

--

And Sora's puzzled, because _he's _usually the one saying he doesn't understand, not she.

She doesn't look at him, though his face is turned to her; the sun is setting in his eyes and now his features are half cool, half gold.

"You said that the Princesses of Heart were completely without darkness."

He nods, squeezing her hand.

"But there's some part of me that's bleeding. Ugly. It tried to tell you, many years ago, to keep Riku away. We would go on our own voyage. Just the two of us. Why me?"

"Why you?" Simple, beautiful Sora. Concerned, questioning and oblivious. Kairi lets out a chuckle she doesn't quite feel and turns to him now.

"Nothing." She leans in to kiss him, and in fact Sora really has some power too, because everything around them begins to melt. She forgets and fades out when their mouths meet; all her darkness seeps away.


	2. eaten

**o2. eaten**

Riku doesn't know what hatred is. Not at first, and not even him, on their sunny idyll of monotony. But boredom isn't hatred. Boredom is apathetic, indifferent. Boredom is a protest, but it stirs no passions and unravels no storms. Boredom is live burial, a sluggishly-suffocating drizzle of sand.

It starts prickling when he finds the puppet-Kairi, limp and motionless as a doll. And then later, when he triumphs, hurling Sora into the castle's pillars, blade tinged with reality (this is not play-time anymore)…

The impact crushes him.

Riku only realizes what hatred is when he begins to hate himself.


	3. wonderland

** o3. Wonderland**

Alice believes in other worlds.

"Oh, we have that here too, did you know that? Sweeping changes in the environment, and new splashes of colour… It's when the trees decide to turn their backs on the rest of us. Have you ever seen the back of a tree? I think not. It's not the time for it yet. When the Doorknob screams (which is about once in a blue moon – have you ever seen a blue moon? It's not really… blue) all the roads change, and _once _I found a line of pretty-in-pink cottages; I hadn't seen them before! And you should see Wonderland when the Unbirthday comes around. Nothing," she adds, very decidedly, "is ever quite the same here."

Alice has asked, and Donald and Goofy have given, and now… she _conquers. _She has that dreamy yet assertive manner of speaking, which usually annoys anyone without Sora's innocence or Goofy's patience. At this Donald engages her in a mini-banter about what seasons _really _are, right down to the technicalities of the matter, but because Sora is not one for details he turns away to Goofy, eagerly;

"So the one we have on Destiny Islands – my home, I mean – it's called… _summer_, right? It's warm and sunny all the time…" As though Goofy and Donald have been with him his whole life, and they are able to see, as clearly as he does, the place that lies nearest to his heart. Of course Goofy can only shrug.

"If it's warm and sunny all the time, it _wouldn't _be a season. Your Destiny Islands would not be seasonal, you know," Alice says thoughtfully, chewing on a strand of hair as she sits down next to Sora. Perhaps she understands more than she has appeared to, after all. She has tired of her debate with Donald, who wanders off to vent his frustration – unwisely – on a mysterious clump of purple grasses near the tea party. It does not take kindly to the Fire spell and smacks him hard in the face with tiny, dice-like fruits.

Sora barely hears her – his head is still full of Destiny Islands – and he leans back, tucking his arms above his head, staring up into the canopy over them. "Why did our teachers never tell us about stuff this important?" he muses, but even before Alice gives the answer, in her mildly matter-of-fact way, Sora knows it.

"If it didn't exist in your world, they wouldn't have known about it."

He's silent for a long while, searching for a glimpse of afternoon rays behind these strange, gigantic trees that he tries to imagine are relatives of coconut or palm ones. Surely Wonderland has a sun. A sky. Clouds. Large bodies of water. If he only looks hard enough…

_My world was so tiny._

Sora whispers the word again, as Alice shifts closer, now examining the spikes that are Sora's hair, as though attempting to prick her finger on them. She echoes him.

_Summer. Sum-mer. Summ-er. Su-mmer. Summmmer. Summeeeeer. Summerrr. _

_--_

_Note_: Challenge prompt - 'Summer'.


	4. round the memory tree

**o4. 'round the memory tree**

Hayner was forgetting something and his fists were curled up with all the explosive force of a volcano in his bid to remember.

Riku was trying hard to forget that he wasn't completely Riku; he was also 'Ansem' and it was killing him all over again to remain cloaked and tucked away, unsure of how it would all end. For, like Hayner, he'd just seen Sora.

They were both spoiling for a hard fight.

A few seconds of a perplexed Hayner's taunts and Riku's well-directed, virulent silence was all it took. Then they were brawling, scuffling around in the dirt in frenzied, flapping black and trailing shoelaces. Knuckles and knees met skin with the force of thunder – _how stupid,_ Riku thought; then as he surfaced, with relish, _hey – I'm a boy again_…

Of course he overpowered Hayner with perfect ease. Hayner found himself tasting the brazen mixture of blood and grit for the first time in a long while. And, even as his jaw scraped against the pavement and every muscle in him clamored, he found himself gasping, struggling to recall a very important name.

The girl came running in them. Olette. The jar of cookies slid from her grasp and shattered. Riku saw the crumbs, wondered idly how well they'd be able to point one home.

He unpinned his boot from the back of Hayner's neck slowly, and even as she stepped towards her beaten friend, her features set so fiercely, her mouth falling open in anger against the hooded stranger, darkness leapt up before him like flames. He left through the portal.

Why did he always have to run away?


	5. phantoms

**o5. phantoms**

He didn't need Phil to tell him that he wasn't really a hero. That he hadn't saved everyone.

He never really talked about it, so not many saw the things he could still see. The glass slipper, shattered, two pairs of mutilated heels. The pumpkin, emancipated as Havisham, split from head to foot, pungent and swarmed with beetles. The crumbled castle, glimpse s of silver hair, and an unnamed Prince hanging from the rafters.

But she still tried smiling, even when taken away.

And her voice haunted him for years to come,

'…_the dream that you wish… will come true._'

--

**Note: **Challenge prompt - 'Still Believe'.


	6. three wonders

**o6. three wonders**

Her nimble feet and tiny stature carried her noiselessly and flightily through, and she finally made it to the front just as, in a long, breathless moment, the captivating gypsy caught a pair of massive, fumbling, hairy hands and drew a deformed creature out into the sunlight.

No one moved, but no one spoke either. The dismay turned her mouth down in an indignant pout; she could feel the townspeople drawing away, although no one took a step.

So _she_ did.

Her arms were around the thick, bristly neck, her cheek pressed close against the misarranged features of the bell-ringer – she felt them all inhaling…

…then the crowd cheered, he smiled, and –

**x**

…her little, pure heart swelled with it.

But Bo-Peep scarcely understood the significance of the pastoral lyrics she so liked to recite. Though he kept to himself, mostly, and oftentimes Andy could not find him – but Buzz's arrival was the last straw.

He, and everyone else, made questing out to be some kind of joke.

So he left her (still lecturing), skirted to the window and leapt. And fell. A thick forest rose up around him. And high above its canopy, streetlamps beat down, like a B-grade adaptation of celestial light, upon the tiny, silver form in the grass.

Alone.

He retreated into the shadows –

**x**

…of the night.

He was seated in between as dusk set in, with the three birds he had hunted lying carelessly across his lap. Dark-headed Mother on the left, fair-skinned Father on the right; Father liked to tell tales of faraway places across the Water, while Mother spoke of the earth that bound them all. And the wind played around their hair, teased their skin, as the child listened in bright-eyed wonder.

He told himself that he could not sleep, should not sleep – for afterwards he was to carve these stories into the cavern walls of his Secret Place. White on black.

But his eyelids struggled against themselves, and so he slept, and dreamt – the boy with the strange blue eyes who wore legends close.

--

**Note: **Challenge prompt - _In Another Life._


	7. glass menagerie

**o7. glass menagerie**

Namine is heartsick of trios.

You can't quantify love; impossible to say, 'I love him three parts and you, two'. But you can't give love equally, either. Impartiality is a Nobody. So there'll be a third wheel. Always. Namine, dead angelfish, is always staring. For Riku, though, sometimes she has to look away.

But Roxas… Roxas is the fourth one. He's an even number. (Why call him a Number? Why make him even more Nobody than he already is?) _Be happy, be happy, be happy_, she prays. Three times, for good measure. The irony...

She speaks of her secret wish – the fulfillment of Aristophane's myth in a small, shut-in universe of only two halves.

For Roxas.

"You don't have the power for such a perfect world," Riku tells her bluntly, "or the right."

Her eyes are stinging and sore from gazing into glaring, pixellised, artificial reality. Even as her fingers trace the humming boundary of the screen, which's almost warm enough to feel alive, she says, very quietly, "I know."


	8. enlightenment

**o8. enlightenment**

He first saw her still in solitude, save for the white fingers clutching something that spread shouts and peals of colour over the blank page. Her fair hair convinced him more than ever that she was a spirit. He didn't tell anyone about the sightings – the tiny tappings down the corridor, the disappearance around a pillar set with emeralds for dragon claws – where was the need? Chien Po had always been the quieter one, anyway, and he believed that if no one else appeared to see what he did, then in some sense, he was bound in an obligation of secrecy to this strange, silent being.

Still, his awareness of her presence formed itself in a short, neat length of incense sticks in the grass of the courtyard where he had first seen her. The day came when her soft, curious footwear planted itself right over the incense sticks themselves. She jumped, realizing what she had trampled upon, then caught sight of the visited staring from a distance,

"…I'm… I'm sorry. Were these yours?"

She straightened the smouldering things hastily, but, beyond repair, they plopped right over again. Chien Po's beady eyes grew very wide and as he left he longed to say, "They're for _you_," but he didn't dare.

Because Chien Po was all simplicity, he never spied on her to see how or when she came and left.

Because Chien Po was all simplicity, he came close enough to realize that some ghosts were warm.

And because Chien Po was all simplicity, he took _It_ from her hands(a tiny, bright yellow thing, wrapped in a flimsy gray paper, that rubbed and reflected yellow back onto his fingers when he rolled them around).

She spoke shyly, hesitantly, about how sketching architecture was not really her style; the imperial palace was too full of straight lines and she only loved the motifs on the sliding entrances and the cherry blossom trees… She said something about wanting to prove that people who never existed in the first place _could_ leave something behind. She talked about the children she watched from afar.

He felt her loss, knew she was troubled. He helped in the only way he could – and suddenly Chien Po, in his simple, solid, broad frame, was transmuting the insignificant into abstracts. It was such a paradox, really. There was the power in the Self, and the Self in tree, sky and flower… The Way. And, as usual, he became lost in his own words and wouldn't stop. Yet she always listened patiently while she sketched those pictures that she could not love all that much, looking up from time to time to fix a wide blue stare upon his humble features.

One day he finally gathered up the courage to ask,

"When will you reincarnate?"

She froze. That thing she called a crayon lifted up ever so slightly from the crinkly paper. Then she smiled. And smiled.

He didn't have to be a Confucius to know that it wasn't a happy sort of smile.

Sometime later, the spirit stopped appearing altogether. Chien Po continued burning incense for her for another one-hundred and thirty-three days.

---

_Note: _Challenge prompt - Another Perspective.


	9. stillicide

**o9. stillicide**

There is a story in the waters of her memory.

"I've told you before. I hate water. I fucking _hate_ water."

The shuriken impales itself onto the sitar and sweeps it out of its owner's arms. Both instruments hurl themselves through the air in a wild dance, a lover's tryst. They tumble onto the moist ground many feet away. Consummated. There are multiple twangs when strings shatter.

She stands his ground. He, his.

And now they're open. Weaponless.

Chainless.

"Be thankful that I _respect_ you, only because you're my enemy."

"Man, that's a queer sort of logic…"

The dancers are still swarming around. Closing in. She feels them but pays no heed. Wishy-washy things as flimsy as a chorus…

"Take me seriously, dammit!"

And, then, as if by magic, the smile is gone from his face.

The last note continues to hang in the air.

She crumples, then:

"I bet… I bet you taste like… fish."

He moves nearer and she shakes (it's cold; it's mid-afternoon and the tide's in and it's _cold_).

"Try me…"

The minute distance between them untried, inexperienced, like the youth in her limbs.

She's still holding her breath but his is taut and warm and raw upon her chin. His hair's dripping icicles, burning where they land on her left cheek and shoulder.

Instead of breath she strains for his heartbeat -

("Leave Hollow Bastion.")

…there _has_ to be one, because it isn't fair that only hers is doing all the beating and pumping and _breaking_.

(closing in)

And then suddenly water bursts through her eyes, nose, mouth… Water caving in her lungs. It's her ribs that are screaming as the dancers swoop in, coalescing into a ruthless reverse waterfall that tosses her up and holds her aloft. Then it dissipates and Yuffie is falling.

Fallen.

**x**

When she finally comes to, there's Sora. There's her shuriken. And Demyx… (ashes and dust.)

_---_

**Note: **Challenge prompt - _Kiss_.


	10. anniversary

**10. anniversary**

Years ago he had barged in, an oversized crow in white, and suddenly the little house of her grandmother's was open to the storm. The windows jerked where they were contained in their grills like in some trashy Gothic novel – and it really was something like that, after all. It was nighttime when he plunged those vials and bottles into her bewildered arms and left as brazenly as he had come; she was left locked into her own home on the hill screaming him down into the roar of the wind. Still, as always, the repressed, disempowered heroine with only a few rushed, cryptic statements and apology to cling on to while she waited. And waited.

But now, finally, he was back: "I said those were reserved for emergencies, didn't I?" – wryly.

She shrugged, holding the remnant bottle up to the dipping light, where the glass glinted and danced in her eye – she winced.

"One night I couldn't sleep at all. I… _felt_ something. Thought something might have happened to either of you." She pursed her lips. "I thought of the stories he told, him and Donald and Goofy, and how he said it worked. The three of them, one in mind and heart and spirit. I kept that in mind and I downed it all. The Mega-Potion. For the three of _us_."

"Despite the distance?"

"Despite the distance."

They were seated in their usual spot, three minus one, studying the vermilion horizon that had given so many miracles before – why wouldn't it grant just one more? Riku's gaze was still averted as he gestured briefly at the empty bottle she continued to clutch, "And the Elixir?"

"I grew an ixora plant. I had nothing to do." There was some bitterness in her tone and how could he blame her? "It began drooping and never came back up. So I dumped the Elixir over it." She gave a small chuckle. "Oh, go on, laugh at me. I should have realized…"

"Realized what?"

"You couldn't use it on dead things."

There was a chill in the air; the waves seemed suddenly noiseless and the leaves hanging over them thick, black, pasted, immovable.

"Sora's not dead."

She turned to him, her gaze clear and direct, her voice steady. "No, he's not. He's still out there somewhere."

"Yes."

"Saving the world again, probably."

"…Yes."

"Without us."

"Kairi, I'm -…"

She checked him with an index finger held an inch from his lips before sliding roughly off the bulbous tree branch. "For the millionth time, Riku," she said, her slippers kicking up sand as she landed. She did not bother to finish her remonstrance. When he returned, he was as empty-handed as he was on his departure, and the very first thing he filled the silence with was his apology. There were two parts to this uncalled-for statement and the first had been forgiven, forgotten, with an ardent blow to his jaw for her abandonment. The second was one that she had no reason to blame him for.

She paused at the edge of the coast, the princess whose reign in fairy tales limited her to such a fixed set of options – sit, wait, cry. She had done all those – rewind, repeat, reset – and, squaring her jaw, Kairi lifted her arm and threw.

The empty Elixir bottle sailed, skimmed, over furious gleams of orange, and disappeared, without a message this time, under the waves that mirrored illusorily the glory of a sunset.  
--

**Note: **Challenge prompt - _Drink Me._


	11. these candles are wanted

**11. These candles are wanted**

Heartless. Heartless. Everywhere. Heaping up to the ceiling, where they nudged chandeliers like prisoners grasping for untainted air in gas chambers. They swung their miniature swords and staffs and shields, the pitifully-elaborate things, and some tumbled out the windows in the squeeze. They slid through cracks and zapped doorknobs. They exploded out of the receptionist's desk like firecrackers. They never left you alone. But soon enough you and your companions littered the unfortunate lobby carpet with carcasses (or was it corpses? you could never decide).

And all the while, the telephone kept on ringing.

In room 287, one of the Blues, you found a couple caught unawares in the middle of a rendezvous. You blushed while putting an end to the enemies there and directed the lovers to the icorrect/i exit – the one that led to the finally-emptied hallway. For they had been ready to totter out and over the balcony in their fright – a man and a woman wrapped in white sheets like two pillars of salt.

In room 304, one of the Greens, your team delivered a decrepit old man whose knees could barely support him as he hunched precariously over an overturned drawer, fishing with uncanny strength the remains of his possessions. You realized he was deaf to the world - literally or metaphorically, it didn't matter; there was a whole crowd of Heartless behind him, ready to swoop in for the attack.

In room 317, one of the Reds, you saw her. Returning a large lamp to its rightful position on the dresser beside a tiny-lettered book whose pages fluttered in the wind. One hand smoothed down her dress, the other was still shaking… There was a broken staff on the floor and a handful of dead Heartless. "When I was young, very young, I was punished and put into a red room like this one. How could anyone know the effect it would have had on me? I shouted. I cried. I must have had a fit… and then I fainted."

She paused. "I come here often. To remind myself of what died that day, and how to face it." Her misty smile reached her eyes, like always.

You closed the door carefully behind you. Flowers pressed into your hands. And somewhere at the end of the lobby, the telephone began ringing again.

---

**Note: **Challenge prompt - _Room 317._


	12. never speak about the ashes

**12. Never Speak About The Ashes**

They find a piano at the edge of the sun-setting town. Axel brushes it lightly, hesitantly, at first. The instrument leaves ten patches of pale dust on all ten of his clothed fingers. Then he presses down on the keys. They go down. Up. Down again._ Thud thud thud thud thud_.

"Courtesy of Mr D.," he says, and Namine grins back at him. The strange, disjointed, careful, clumsy noises send shivers along her spine. When he finally settles into the melody proper he sends little sparks, little candle-flames, dancing over the keys as they move. She gasps, claps. It burns visions and dreams into her head, the sight, sound, _everything_. This is life.

They get up to leave, one tiny meal and much-needed nap later. Once outside, Axel's piano-playing fingers go snap. Slow, callous flames paint the house's walls, lick across the room, trickle up the piano.

This is -

Namine grabs his arm. "_Why_? Nobody's going to hunt us down. DiZ can't, Riku won't, Organization XIII…" Tears burn in her eyes. "But you didn't need to…"

He almost laughs her passion aside, not understanding her grief - the way someone with a real heart is supposed to. And she doesn't know how to tell him that back in the abandoned house it is fire devouring wood and wood consumed by fire. That it is precarious, the balance between gentleness and brutality. And the way they both live off each other. In storms, in fireplaces, in blank castles... ever since the beginning of time.

---

**Note: **Challenge prompt - _Fire. _


	13. the eighth square

**13. The Eighth Square**

Alice crosses the brook and instantly she feels a vice winding around her head.

She yelps, reaching up a hand to her brow. Her fingers brush the golden ridges of a crown embedded thickly in her hair.

"Ow," Alice says, and walks on.

There is a long, glittering golden key in the distance. Alice stands before it and suddenly feels another girlish heart pounding along with hers. There is a warm, knowing presence emanating from the item. Alice bends for a closer look – her lips curve at the chained star. She remembers now.

"Kairi!" Laughing then, wonderingly, "Sora…"

Her gaze follows the length of the Keyblade and the pretty flowers at the end point in the direction of a stranger some yards away.

"Oh, hello... What are you?"

Dark tendrils of smoke pour from the stranger's body. He lifts his chin slightly, fixing her with a nothing-stare. His clothes are black-on-white, or white-on-black – Alice isn't sure.

"You don't look Wonderland-ish, you know," Alice says.

"What are you waiting for?" the man whispers in a ragged breath.

Alice stiffens all over at the voice. It is familiar. The pieces are lined up, and everything is falling into place, coming full circle.

"Ans…" she trails off, picks up the Keyblade. She steps forward. "This… this is grand. You."

"Go ahead."

Alice stops.

"I don't understand!" – traces of a whine, because Alice is a child, after all. But her blue eyes, bright, see and know more than she speaks .

"End it. As you should. I have lost."

"May I – if you don't mind me asking again - what _are_ you?"

"I'm what's left. Or maybe I'm all that ever was." He breaks into a toneless laugh.

Alice stares at him, her small, bright face impassive, and gently she puts down the Keyblade. The laughing continues.

"What is this? Pity? Nobility? Pawn," he is quiet now, fading, "follow the rules."

Alice shakes her head. "I'm only good for dreaming."

"That's universal," Black-and-white says, then shudders. His pain is real. Alice closes her eyes momentarily against the redness of the black smoke – it is like blood. "Do as you wish."

Alice shifts forward, her gay blue dress rustling, and reaches out both hands for his brow. His glassy eyes follow her every action. The slow pulse in his temples scald her, shock her. He isn't supposed to have a heart. What, then, is this? And then in his pale hair the iron springs to her fingers, coiled like a snake around his head.

"Whichever you did, there wasn't any _difference_." His voice is lost in the wind now, but his eyes never leave her even as Alice lifts the crown off his dissipating form.

A million universes away, Kingdom Hearts crumbles, and the last of Xemnas's dream turns to dust in Queen Alice's grasp.

---

**Note: **Challenge prompt - _Black-and-White. _


	14. the last day

**14. The Last Day**

Sora always went back, again and again – he couldn't help himself.

They were supposed to visit the beach that day, but when Sora arrived they were all out of funds. So he did what he did best – he lent a hand, and what a very good hand it was, too. His palm was tinged red from slapping at least thirty-or-so garish Struggle posters about the appropriate walls of the districts. But somehow it was easy, despite the terrain, because for some reason the quickest, easiest route was burned into his memory.

They were all staring at him, open-mouthed - sunset was burning gold into his hair as he leapt down from a certain green ledge. (It convulsed heavily under Sora's foot but, thankfully, remained intact.)

Hayner was the first to find his voice.

"Wow. That… that was amazing, Sora. None of us ever did it that fast."

"Thanks," Sora said awkwardly, and emptied the earnings into Olette's munny-bag.

It was heavier than any of them could have expected, but nobody seemed to want to make a move for the train station. They were all waiting for something.

And finally Olette said, "Sora, will you show us the photograph again?"

He hesitated, then nodded. The other three huddled around it. There was silence again, broken only at length by Pence,

"Our… fake selves."

"Not fake," Sora half-shouted. Three pairs of startled gazes swung towards him wordlessly, then back at the poker face in the picture.

"I've always thought this… He doesn't seem used to cameras."

"He's the serious kind," Hayner said, keeping his tone casual. "The… the 'a pence for your thoughts' type. Ha ha!" He slapped Pence on the back.

("Ha ha," Pence said.)

They were supposed to visit the beach that day, but Sora knew from 'experience' that they never would. The sun was fast dipping over the horizon by this time, and Sora, locking his hands behind his head in his usual careless way, told them as lightly as he could about how he had another life, another sunny sandy paradise, and now that things were nearly done he didn't know when he could be coming back again…

But the other three saw the strange ache he was fighting to hide, anyway, and there was real dismay and regret on their faces.

"Then the four of us should take a picture together. As a memento." Olette, sensible as always.

So the four found themselves lined up at the old mansion's gates, before a camera poised to capture a tiny piece of world from atop a wobbly tripod.

And Sora made sure to smile for it, this time.

---

**Note: **Challenge prompt - _Poker Face. _


	15. what newton forgot

**15. What Newton Forgot**

He made her laugh. He made her laugh, so much, that her back bent, involuntarily, and she thought her hand would slide out of his grasp. It was silvery, it glowed, and it was that visual factor more than anything else that made her suppose the slipperiness, _elusiveness, _of their contact.

"Sora's right. You _do _know how to tell a good joke."

But he _was _immaterial – in some sense – pixel built upon pixel… and yet, so was she, too. _For now_.

"But can you tell a lie?"

"A lie," Tron said. His eyes were warm enough, human enough. There was real bemusement in them.

"Do you know what a lie is?"

"Technically, _yes._"

_If our hearts run on a separate system from that of flesh and blood, cogs and gears, microcycles and digits –_

"But you can't tell one. Technically."

_- then you're as real as I am. _

"No." He looked almost apologetic. They had reached the portal, and under that callous red beam they danced, again.

_You're the mind of a machine. Does that make you a machine too? _He was, after all, as linear an operation as the periodic, regular, mechanical drumming of their heels and toes against the cold, hard floors.

Tron grinned at her and she grinned back. She wondered if her cheeks were flushed, could flush, here. Perhaps the red light would add to that effect.

_And if the laws are broken, then so is the system._

They stopped. Their steps echoed down the bare corridors, but dissipated soon enough within the sterility of their surroundings. He let go of her hand. She fought disappointment. _Silly. _But he continued holding his out, all lambent grays and blues –

It took form like magic in his palm – cream paper, curling reds, petals, the long, slender neck of a bouquet.

"It's for you." Tron was shy.

She accepted it wordlessly and backed into the portal, drenched in red light. "Thank you," regretfully.

"The flowers are at least fifty-seven kilobytes apiece. And the bouquet another thirty-two..."

She laughed. "Should you even be telling me the cost of a gift?"

He looked puzzled, and his gaze seemed to ask, _What's wrong with that, _out there? But he never spoke the questions. He knew. He knew that without the User-world he would cease to exist.

_And so for you there remains nothing else but to exist in opposition to flesh-and-blood._

"Tomorrow night," she promised.

"I don't know when that is… Why don't you upload day and night here? The way you programmed the garden."

"You'll be asking for a farm next, you!"

Reluctantly, her fingers located the correct button on the panel. She sunk it in, and the last she saw of Tron was his mirroring wave. The beams pulled her out of herself and into -

---

- herself.

Back to reality in the lab, in her long soft dress, and growling stomach, and in her hand -

_Displaced data. _

…there was a… bouquet?

Her gaze was wondering, incredulous. Her mind spun with a real, heady, _familiar_ scent. She grew flowers just like this. She traced the petals lightly, then idly grabbed hold of one. Pulled.

Footsteps pervaded the area, and, by some questionable, childish instinct, she whipped the bouquet guiltily behind her back. Leon entered, stopped at the sight of her and stifled his monstrous yawn. "You're here again," he said. "Taken to technology, have you?"

She gave a small smile. "Not particularly," she said, quietly.

---

**Note: **Challenge prompt - _Liar. _


	16. gift of her own

**16. Gift of Her Own**

There hadn't been any reason to run away, Namine knew. It was dark, it was quiet; oh, outside it was dark all around and quiet all around even though her own little white room was always silent too, no doubt about it. But at least it'd fitted her; the paleness stuck to her skin like paper, and the unspoken words rising from the blank walls to curl about her little white form. She began to realize that this tabula rasa was like her, _was_ her; prison, home, sanctuary all in one. She was safe here.

But blank slates were full of promise, potential; she had none.

So she left.

**x**

In the end she went from one white room to another, and another, and another... Namine began to think that it would never end - until a serendipitous set of hands passed her the crayons, and then her vision exploded with colour.

---

**Note: **Challenge prompt - _Gift. _


End file.
